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Saturday, May 14, 2011

Beijing accuses Clinton of promoting an "Arab spring" in China

Beijing .- Beijing on Saturday criticized the U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, to condemn human rights violations in China and said any attempt to further unrest as the Middle East in China will be futile. "It is inappropriate that anyone compare China with some countries in Africa and Middle East turmoil facing," he said in a statement posted on the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the day by his spokesman, Jiang Yu.

The official's tone was different from that used the press conference on Thursday when he tried to downplay Clinton's comments, published on Tuesday by the Atlantic magazine, which said the human rights situation in China was "deplorable" . Clinton called it a "crazy mission" the Chinese regime's attempts to "impede the course of history" toward democracy with its current crackdown on dissent, in which hundreds of activists, lawyers, intellectuals and artists have been detainees, including one of the designers of the Olympic Stadium, Ai Weiwei.

The campaign of arrests, described by analysts and human rights groups as the fiercest since a decade, began in February, when anonymous calls and fruitless Internet China urged people to participate in a "jasmine revolution" in a attempt to emulate the peaceful "Arab spring." "Any attempt to promote unrest in the Middle East in China and change the path of development chosen by the Chinese people will be useless," spokeswoman Jiang concluded in its statement.

Although anonymous calls got popular support, the Chinese government charged the foreign press trying to cover the news and reinforced a crackdown that began in October when it issued the award of the Nobel Peace Prize Chinese political prisoner Liu Xiaobo. Hundreds of lawyers, activists and religious Protestants have recently been detained, harassed, interrogated, detained in their homes or gone missing since February, while cyber attacks from China have blocked the platform created in Change.

org museums around the world to demand the release of Ai, detained since April 3.